Tomb Raider dev reveals cut features, says “bows are sexy”

Tomb Raider follows Crysis 3, Assassin’s Creed 3 and a slew of movies that see their heroes wielding bows. Crystal Dynamics has discussed this fact and a list of features cut from its 2013 reboot, including horse riding and a young girl companion.

Speaking with OPM, Crystal Dynamics’ brand director Karl Stewart explained why some of the game’s features had to be cut, “One of the hardest decisions was that we knew we needed to make a change. We looked at all the games that were out at the time, studied them, did research, read reviews. And we realised that we needed to make something new.”

“Some of our soul-searching was about [asking] how we bring Lara to life in a way we’ve never done before,” Stewart continued, “she’s had a personality, but not anything like what we show now with that emotion and intensity.”

“We added a little girl at one stage,” he revealed, “She was going to be a companion, a way to show Lara in a different light. We had a horse, too. It was great for her to move around on, but we soon realised that a horse implied ‘open world’, like, ‘Why can’t I gallop around the whole island?’ So the horse had to go.”

So why does Lara wield a bow, besides the obvious fact that she has to hunt to survive? “The short answer is, bows are sexy,” Stewart laughs, ” It’s the in thing right now, from Hunger Games all the way through to Avengers. The long answer is, we started to look at emotion as a big part of our game, and when we delved into that – we started back in late 2008, so it’s been a long time – we looked at the evolution of things like the James Bond series.”

“Back in the day when Sean Connery and Roger Moore were James Bond,” Stewart concludes, “there wasn’t much emotion. That was the way it was, it was culturally relevant to an audience. Then you get Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton trying that same tone 25 years later, and people feel like it’s cheesy. Games, like movies, are more aware of emotion these days.”